The present invention relates to processing omnidirectional contents (e.g., image contents or video contents), and more particularly, to a method and an apparatus for generating and encoding a projection-based frame with a 360-degree content (e.g., 360-degree image content or 360-degree video content) represented by a base projection face and a plurality of lateral projection faces packed in a pyramid projection layout (e.g., a compact viewport-based pyramid projection layout).
Virtual reality (VR) with head-mounted displays (HMDs) is associated with a variety of applications. The ability to show wide field of view content to a user can be used to provide immersive visual experiences. A real-world environment has to be captured in all directions resulting in an omnidirectional image/video content corresponding to a sphere. With advances in camera rigs and HMDs, the delivery of VR content may soon become the bottleneck due to the high bitrate required for representing such a 360-degree image/video content. When the resolution of the omnidirectional video is 4K or higher, data compression/encoding is critical to bitrate reduction.